Cryptonomicon

The tea takes some time in coming and Lord Woadmire does not seem to be in any particular hurry to win the war either, so Waterhouse makes a circuit of the room, pretending to care about the paintings. The biggest one depicts a number of bruised and lacerated Romans dragging their sorry asses up onto a rocky and unwelcoming shore as splinters of their invasion fleet wash up around them. Front and center is a particular Roman who looks no less noble for wear and tear. He is seated wearily on a high rock, a broken sword dangling from one enervated hand, gazing longingly across several miles of rough water towards a shining, paradisiacal island. This isle is richly endowed with tall trees and flowering meadows and green pastures, but even so it can be identified as Outer Qwghlin by the Three Sghrs towering above it. The isle is guarded by a forbidding castle or two; its pale, almost Caribbean beaches are lined with the colorful banners of a defending host which (one can only assume) has just given the Roman invaders a bit of rough handling which they will not soon forget. Waterhouse does not bother to bend down and squint at the plaque; he knows that the subject of the painting is Julius Cæsar's failed and probably apocryphal attempt to add the Qwghlm Archipelago to the Roman Empire, the farthest from Rome he ever got and the least good idea he ever had. To say that the Qwghlmians have not forgotten the event is like saying that Germans can sometimes be a little prickly.

"Where Caesar failed, what hope has Hitler?"

Waterhouse turns towards the voice and discovers Nigel St. John Gloamthorpby a.k.a. Lord Woadmire, a.k.a. the Duke of Qwghlm. He is not a tall man. Waterhouse goose-steps through the carpet to shake his hand. Though Colonel Chattan briefed him on proper forms of address when meeting a duke, Waterhouse can no more remember this than he can diagram the duke's family tree, so he decides to structure all of his utterances so as to avoid referring to the duke by name or pronoun. This will be a fun game and make the time go faster.

"It is quite a painting," Waterhouse says, "a heck of a deal."

"You will find the islands themselves no less extraordinary, and for the same reasons," the duke says obliquely.

The next time Waterhouse is really aware of what's going on, he is sitting in the duke's office. He thinks that there has been some routine polite conversation along the way, but there is never any point in actually monitoring that kind of thing. Tea is offered to him, and is accepted, for the second or third time, but fails to materialize.

"Colonel Chattan is in the Mediterranean, and I have been sent in his place," Waterhouse explains, "not to waste time covering logistical details, but to convey our enormous gratitude for the most generous offer made in regards to the castle." There! No pronouns, no gaffe.

"Not at all!" The duke is taking the whole thing as an affront to his generosity. He speaks in the unhurried, dignified cadences of a man who is mentally thumbing through a German-English dictionary. "Even setting aside my own... patriotic obligations... cheerfully accepted, of course..., it has almost become almost... terribly fashionable to have a whole... crew... of... uniformed fellows and whatnot running around in one's... pantry.

"Many of the great houses of Britain are doing their bit for the War," Waterhouse agrees.

"Well... by all means, then... use it!" the duke says. "Don't be... reticent! Use it... thoroughly! Give it a good... working over! It has... survived... a thousand Qwghlm winters and it will... survive your worst."

"We hope to have a small detachment in place very soon," Waterhouse says agreeably.

"May I... know..., to satisfy my own... curiosity..., what sort of... ?" the duke says, and trails off.

Waterhouse is ready for this. He is so ready that he has to hold back for a moment and try to make a show of discretion. "Huffduff."

"Huffduff?"

"HFDF. High-Frequency Direction Finding. A technique for locating distant radio transmitters by triangulating from several points."

"I should have... thought you knew where all the... German... transmitters were."

"We do, except for the ones that move."

"Move!?" The duke furrows his brow tremendously, imagining a giant radio transmitter-building, tower and all--mounted on four parallel rail road tracks like Big Bertha, creeping across a steppe, drawn by harnessed Ukrainians.

"Think U-boats," Waterhouse says delicately.

"Ah!" the duke says explosively. "Ah!" He leans back in his creaky leather chair, examining a whole new picture with his mind's eye. "They... pop up, do they, and send out... wireless?"

"They do."

"And you... eavesdrop."

"If only we could!" Waterhouse says. "No, the Germans have used all of that world-famous mathematical brilliance of theirs to invent ciphers that are totally unbreakable. We don't have the first idea what they are saying. But, by using huffduff, we can figure out where they are saying it from,and route our convoys accordingly."